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By Guillermo J. Román

The precipitation of copper and zinc as cements from a copper alloys' spent pickling solution has been studied at laboratory and pilot scale, with the objective of designing an economic process to recover both metals and render a solution to be either recycled to the pickling process or treated in a standard fashion and produce a non-hazardous sludge. The sulfuric acid spent pickling solution already containing copper and zinc was used first to dissolve another solid residue originated in the copper alloys foundry to neutralize part of the acidity. The resulting enriched solution was treated separately with two reductants,; sodium borohydride and iron powder varying pH and excess of reductant under constant agitation. Under the best conditions, precipitation of over 95 percent of zinc and copper was achieved together with the reduction of lead and cadmium contents respectively. A process for the combined residues treatment is proposed.

Jan 1, 1995

By Joel K. Witt

San Manuel Oxide operations of BHP Copper, located in Southeastern Arizona, operates a leach-solvent extraction/electrowinning (SXEW) facility that produces high quality cathode copper from low-grade oxide ores. Permanent heap leaching and in-situ leaching methods accomplish the dissolution of copper from the oxide ores. Open pit mining and heap leach construction took place from 1985 to 1995. Run-of-mine oxide ore from the pit was hauled to the heap dumps and leached by the soaking cure and continuous irrigation method. Solution application to the heaps still continues and acid soluble copper recovery has reached 86%. This paper presents and discusses the current operating practices and innovations applied to the leach facilities to maximize copper recovery from the heap leached residue. Factors such as irrigation methods, solution chemistry, sideslope treatment, post curing, lixiviant acid strength, and "rice paddies" irrigation, will be discussed. Heap leach solution control and sampling methodologies will be also presented.

Jan 1, 1999

By Ahmad Umar

A variety of ZnO nanostructures such as sea-urchin-like structures composed of nanowires and nanorods, nanocombs, nano/micro spheres and cages, star-shaped ZnO nanostructures, flower-shaped nanostructures, needle-like nanostructures etc. have been synthesized applying two different fabrication techniques i.e. thermal evaporation and cyclic feeding chemical vapor deposition techniques at different reaction parameters such as reaction temperature, growth period, reactant concentrations, types of source material and substrates etc. It was observed from the experiments that the morphologies of the grown structures were highly influenced by the reaction parameters and fabrication techniques and specific morphology can be obtained at particular reaction parameters in a specific synthetic procedure. Extensive morphological investigations of the obtained products demonstrate that the grown structures are single crystalline and having a wurtzite hexagonal phase. Room-temperature photoluminescence spectra of all the deposited products exhibited good optical properties. Finally, the growth process of the fabricated structures were proposed and discussed in detail.

Jan 1, 2006

By Wang Youlai

Sichuan province is the richest province for its waterpower resource in China, perfectly suited to develop a high consuming energy industry. Sichuan Aostar Group Company has two Aluminum smelters, Guangyuan Aostar smelter and Sichuan Aostar Smelter. The production capacity of Aostar Group was 240,000 tons in 2004. The construction scale of Sichuan Aostar Aluminum smelter is 250,000 tons per year. The first 168 GY-300KA pre-baked anode cells (125,000 tons/year) were put into production in 2003. This company has taken the lead in the use of the transfer gantry technology in China. Besides making the process of calibration the pot shell it has concentrated the efforts to construct cell lining elsewhere. This company also has taken the lead in China for using the EIRICH force mixing and cooling technology as well as in the world for the CP Company?s vertical ball mill technology that produces the pre-baked anodes. The carbon anode system completed its 190,000 tons/year production scale. This is the most advanced technology and the biggest scale pre-baking anode manufacture in China. Since the Sichuan Aostar 300KA cell was put into production, it runs normally and smoothly. Up to now the current efficiency is higher than 94% and the specific energy is only 13300kWh/T-Al.

Jan 1, 2006

By Masahiro Sasaki, Wu Kepeng, Chang-Yong. Kang, Kohji Okada, Naohiro Igata, Kazuya Miyahara

"The damping capacity of the Fe-12 mass % Cr-6 to 30 mass % Mn alloys has been investigated. Particularly the effects of microstrucutre composed of the phases of a , a ' , y , and e on the damping capacity have been clarified. Various fraction of these phases were formed depending on the Mn content and cold work degree. The combination of 22 mass % Mn and 50% cold rolling formed the largest volume fraction of e martensite and showed the highest damping capacity. The other phases of a, a' and y had very small effect on the increasing of damping capacity.IntroductionFe-Mn alloys are known to be one of the high damping capacity materials [l-3]. In the present research, the damping capacity of the Fe-12 mass % Cr-6 to 30 mass % Mn alloys, in which 12% Cr is added for the improvement of corrosion resistance of the Fe-Mn alloys, has been investigated. Particularly the effects of microstrucutre composed of various phases of a (bee), a ' (bet martensite), y (fee), and e (hcp martensite) on the damping capacity have been clarified. The results of preliminary research on Fe-Cr-Mn alloys are reported by Igata et al. [4] Various volume fraction of these phases were formed depending on the Mn content and cold work degree. The combination of 22 % Mn and 50% cold rolling formed the largest fraction of e martensite and the measurement indicated clearly that e martensite had the largest effect on the damping capacity. The other phases of a ' y and a I had very small effect on the increasing of damping capacity."

Jan 1, 2000

By Mark Samonds

"Manufacturing processes which involve liquid to solid and solid state transformations in metals encompass a wide variety of physical phenomena. The past twenty years have seen a steady evolution in the complexity and scope of numerical models of these processes, beginning with thermal analyses without phase change. Recently, a few software packages have become available which have true multi-physics capabilities. This permits the treatment of thermal, fluids, stress, electromagnetic, chemical reaction and microstructure development aspects altogether in a fully coupled simulation. This paper will consider various aspects of these types of models.Coupled thermal and fluid flow analyses of continuous castings have been around for fifteen years. Coupled thermal and free surface fluid flow simulations of shape castings have been available for ten years, including view factor radiation models for investment castings. Only recently, however, have fully coupled thermal, fluid, and stress analyses become practical. This implies the reverse coupling of the mechanical deformations to the solution of the energy and momentum equations through modification to the interface heat transfer coefficients and the fluid domain geometry. This has been implemented with a combined eulerian-lagrangian finite element method. Appropriate mechanical constitutive models will also be discussed.Many types of defects need to be predicted in casting processes. Those related to stress include hot tearing, hot cracking, part distortion, and thermal fatigue in dies. Macroporosity, microporosity, and microsegregation are determined by the solidification behavior and microstructure development in a casting. In particular, microporosity is influenced by dissolved gases, the morphology of the mushy zone, the liquid to solid density change, and the local pressure conditions. Macrosegregation is caused by the partitioning of solutes during. solidification and subsequent thermo-solutal convection. An additional transport equation is required for each solute that is being tracked. Computational thermodynamics is being incorporated into these types of analyses to determine transformation temperatures, partition coefficients, densities, and enthalpies. In combination, the microstructure and microporosity models can frequently predict a variety of mechanical models, such as yield strength, tensile strength, and elongation."

Jan 1, 2001

By Dan Wang, Qian Li, Yong-bin Yang, Tao Jiang

"Thiosulfate is one of the most promising non-cyanide lixiviants for gold leaching. However, the undesirable reaction between thiosulfate and copper (II) gives rise to increased reagent consumption, which results in high cost and huge limit to its development. This paper presents study on the effect of ammonia, copper (II) and Cu(NH3)l+ ions on the oxidative decomposition of thioulfate. It shows that the presence of copper (II) and Cu(NH3)l+ can significantly increase the thiosulfate oxidation, while ammonia is relatively unaffected. The oxidation of thiosulfate by copper(II) in the absence of ammonia is fast at first and then decreases as time increased within a certain time, which can postulate that an intermediate product is responsible for the decreased consumption. The effect of ammonia is depended on the interaction with copper (II), which was found to significantly affect the consumption of thiosulfate.IntroductionFor over one century cyanidation is widely used in industrial production of gold, due to its simplity of process and low cost of production. However, cyanide is a highly toxic chemical reagent used dangerously and brings serious environmental pollution. What's more, cyanidation has slow speed of leaching gold and poorly leaching effective for refractory ores. With the exhausting of free-milling gold ores and promoted environmental protection requests, the disadvantage of cyanidation becomes a growing problem. In recent years, more and more research activities have been focused on alternative processes using non-cyanide lixiviants. Among the non-cyanide lixiviants, thiosulfate is considered as the most promising one[l-5].Compared to cyanide, thiosulfate is an inexpensive, nontoxic and less-pollution reagent, which can form complexes with many metal ions. Thiosulfate leaching of gold has an acceptable leaching rate and is insensitivity to impurities. Moreover it presents advantage on the treatment of refractory gold ores such as carbonaceous gold ores, copper gold ores, complex arsenic and sulfur gold ores, and so on[6]."

Jan 1, 2013

By Thomas Gliick, Jianming Lu, David Dreisinger

"The Boleo project of Baja Mining (Vancouver) will process a mixed oxide-sulfide ore using an acid oxidation and reduction process in seawater to extract copper, zinc, cobalt and manganese. Copper will be extracted via SX-EW as copper cathode, zinc will be recovered as a zinc sulphate monohydrate crystal and cobalt will be produced as a cobalt cathode product after phosphinic acid extraction. Manganese may be recovered from the final solvent extraction raffinate by precipitation as manganese carbonate.The development of the cobalt recovery process (solvent extraction and electrowinning) will be discussed. The pilot plant solvent extraction circuit and subsequent bench and small pilot testing of cobalt electrowinning will be discussed. The Boleo project will produce approximately 1708 tonnes per armum of cobalt metal when fully commissioned.INTRODUCTIONThe Boleo property is held by the Mexican company, Minera y Metalllrgica del Boleo S.A. de C.V. (MMB). MMB is owned 70% by Baja Mining Corp. and 30% by a consortium of Korean companies consisting of KORES - Korea Resources Corporation, LS Nikko Copper, Hyundai Hysco, SK Networks and Iljin Copper. The project is fully financed and is now under construction with an expected startup in early 2013 .Average annual production, for the first six years for each of the metals is forecast as: 56,697 tonnes of copper cathode, 1,708 tonnes of cobalt cathode and 25,364 tonnes of zinc sulphate monohydrate. The project has an average life-of-mine cash cost (based on the three year trailing average metal prices, as of December 31, 2009, in accordance with SEC guidelines) of -$0.29/lb Cu, net of by-product credits for cobalt and zinc and with no credit for manganese production. There is the potential to produce up to 220,000 tonnes per armum of manganese carbonate (- 100,000 tpa contained Mn) via the relatively simple addition of a small number of unit operations to the proposed plant. The recovery of manganese metals from the manganese carbonate intermediate material is discussed in a separate paper in this proceeding."

Jan 1, 2012

By Ian Masters, A. R. Khoei, D. T. Gethin

This paper describes an experimental investigation into the effects of process parameters on product quality during an aluminum recycling process. In order to build a model relating recovery to the process parameter variables and then use the model for prediction, process optimisation, or process control, a historical data analysis is employed by observing patterns in the datalogged information at IMCO Recycling Ltd. In previous work, we emphasised the importance of expressing the results of an experiment quantitatively, by implementation of a Taguchi approach, to facilitate understanding, interpretation and implementation. This research presents the technical tools that are needed to achieve quality improvement in recycling of aluminum. In this study we apply the use of historical data matching through a Taguchi orthogonal analysis, in order to control and improve the quality characteristic. For this purpose, a numerical model is developed to characterise the inputs and outputs of the process. A response surface methodology (RSM) is employed to find a suitable approximation for the true functional relationship between response and the process parameter variables. The method of least squares is used to estimate the approximating polynomials. Subsequently, Taguchi's method is used to determine the relative significance of each of the parameters. Finally, process management software (written in Visual Basic) is described, and its interface with the process modelling and optimisation routines is discussed.

Jan 1, 2000

By V. Bhagavathy

This paper describes a method for the determination of traces of rare earths using energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (EDXRF) after preconcentration of their oxine complexes onto activated carbon. Various parameters that influence adsorptive preconcentration of rare earths onto activated carbon viz. pH, amounts of activated carbon and oxine, time of stirring and aqueous phase volume were systematically studied. A numerical method based on simple least square procedure using fifth order polynomial with 25 consecutive values was developed for smoothing and differentiation of EDXRF data which was previously digitized and averaged. First order derivative EDXRF in conjunction with adsorptive preconcentration on activated carbon enables to determine as low as 10 ppb of each of individual rare earth elements.

Jan 1, 1989

By S. C. Sharma

The aluminium matrix composites with ceramic dispersoids can be separated by density difference concept. In the proposed work composite scrap is recycled using an oil fired furnace. The scrap is melted in the furnace and temperature is maintained below 740 degree centigrade. Because of the density difference the lighter dispersoids will float and heavier dispersoids will settle down. The clean melt is separated be removing the floating and settled disperssoils, and then filtering using ceramic filters.

Jan 1, 1995

By Khoo Khyou Pin, Yoshiyuki Funaki, Hirotsugu Takeuchi, Ryoichi Urao, Naotatsu Asahi

"Steel is used to be ion carburized with mixing gas of methane and hydrogen. In carburizing, carbon in the methane decomposes and deposits on the steel by plasma, so methane gas flow may influence on ion carburizing of the steel. An apparatus in which works can transfer preheating, ion-carburizing and diffusion treating zones continuously was made for effective carburizing of steel. The gases were flown into above three zones with three different gas inlets. The hardness and microstructure of the works were investigated after ion carburizing and quenching. The steel is carburized deeper near the carburizing gas flow nozzle of the inlet than far from the nozzle. Hard surface layer fom1ed by quenching of ion-carburized steel.IntroductionGas carburizing is used for a surface hardening treatment which decreases fatigue and wear of the industrial parts used in automobile, machines etc. Ion and vacuum carburizing have been developed recently and applied to some industrial parts of restrictive purposes. The ion carburizing treatment which uses hollow cathode discharge (HCD ion-carburizing) is superior in energy saving, resource saving, environmental cleanness to the other carburizing treatment. Specially, carburizing energy can be saved in HCD ion-carburizing, because highly heated zone can be restricted in the range between work and subsidiary cathode where hollow cathode discharge arises, and the work is carburized in shorter tin1e in HCD ion carburizing method than other carburizing methods. Three treatments of preheating, carburizing methods and carbon potential controlling by hollow cathode discharge tried to be carried out in one continuous transferring series to carburize works more effectively, so the HCD ion-carburizing apparatus with continuous transferring system was made and gears of works were HCD ion-carburized in continuous transferring. The works were rotated themselves to get homogeneous carburizing by continuous transferring in glow of hollow cathode discharge."

Jan 1, 2000

By M. Misra

The volume of low-level contaminated soil at the. Department of Energy's Nuclear Weapon Sites are in the order of several million tons. Most of the contaminants are uranium, plutonium, other heavy metals and organic compounds. Selected Physical separation processes have shown demonstrated potential in COD Centratingthe radio nuclides in a small fraction of the soil. Depending upon the size, nature of bonding and distributions of radio nuclides, more than 90 percent of the radio nuclide activity can be concentrated in a small volume of fraction of the soil. The physico-chemical separation processes such as flotation in a mechanical and microbubble tall column cell have shown, promising applications in cleaning up the high volume contaminated soil.

Jan 1, 1995

By P. G. Schirk, D. J. Roth

ALTEK has developed a processing system that can receive large pieces of dross & bath, of various metal contents, and reduce and separate these highly metallic concentrates into oxides and non-metallics. This system achieves these results without grinding the metallics into fines. Its unique feature results in the preservation of metallic unit in its largest possible size, which allows for maximum .metal recoveries. The Tumbler, an ALTEK-Didion International joint development, and the ALTEK High Velocity Impacting System (HVIS) are the key elements to this process. This paper will explore the advantage of this cold cleaning system over the direct melting of the raw dross in the reduction of landfill waste. The system also works well for removal of the aluminum from bath from primary smelters.

Jan 1, 2000

By Roger Agnew

Sulphide ores mined by Inco Limited in the Sudbury District contain small quantities of cobalt. During beneficiation, cobalt distribution to various streams is similar to nickel. After smelting, nickel is selectively extracted by carbonyl refining and the cobalt remains in the carbonylation residue. This residue is processed in a specialized hydrometallurgical plant to produce precious metal residues, copper cathodes, and a nickel- cobalt carbonate intermediate product. The nickel-cobalt is shipped to Port Colborne where the cobalt is separated as cobaltic hydroxide and refined to metallic cobalt. This paper deals specifically with the recently constructed Electro Cobalt Refinery. The cobaltic hydroxide is dissolved and residual zinc, copper and nickel are removed by ion exchange and organics by a carbon column. The purified cobalt solution is fed to the electrowinning circuit where cobalt rounds are produced on stainless steel mandrels. In the design and construction of the refinery, special attention was directed to materials of construction both for the process equipment and the physical plant, operating control and flexibility, and the quality of the working environment. The end result is an efficient and clean operation which yields a product of excellent quality.

Jan 1, 1988

By Gregor Mori

Niobium electrolysis has been performed in a NaCl-KCl-NaF-NbCls electrolyte. By means of electrolytic .refining the average valency of the niobium ions was determined as well as the crystallization behaviour. In electrowinning runs the influence of the main parameters such as temperature, RF (mole ratio F/Nb), chemical prereduction, niobium content of the melt and current density has been determined with respect to low specific energy consumption and high purity of the deposit.

Jan 1, 1995

The concepts of capacity and basicity have proved extremely useful in dealing with a wide range of solute species in metallurgical slags, and as a result have been widely applied. These two concepts are reviewed, and it is suggested that the Lewis approach to basicity has much to commend it. In some cases, it appears that the term capacity has been used without due consideration being given to the nature of the solution being formed, or even to whether a true solution was being formed at all. This paper proposes a rigorous definition of capacity, based on the true nature of the solution process in slags and glasses, and briefly reviews the repercussions of this approach on data available in the literature and the limitations which it may impose on future investigations in this area.

Jan 1, 1994

By John K. Wright

The segregation process involves heating oxide-type ores with a halide salt in the presence of a solid reductant. By a complex series of cyclic vapour-phase reactions, the desired metal is extracted from its original position in the ore and segregated to the vicinity of the reductant. In this form it is then amenable to concentration by physical methods. In this work the segregation behaviour or eight different nickel laterite ores has been examined using a laboratory rotary kiln. It was found that the silicate (serpentine) ores responded better to the segregation conditions used than did the limonitic ores. An examination of the segregated metal particles showed that they consisted of ferro-nickel. The concentration of nickel in the metallics was sensitive to the ore types and the segregation roasting conditions.

Jan 1, 1994

By T. J. A. Smith

This paper provides an overview of some of the key issues in design of smelter gas handling systems, with particular reference to smelter smelting plants. In both primary smelting and converting, gas handling and treatment systems often represent the major capital cost component. There is also ample evidence that poor system design can be a major cause of smelter down time, lost production and unforeseen high maintenance costs. The paper discusses these issues and offers guidance for improved design.

Jan 1, 1992

By T. J. A. Smith

This paper provides an overview of some of the key issues in design of smelter gas handling systems, with particular reference to sulphide smelting plants. In both primary smelting and converting. gas handling and treatment systems often represent the major capital cost component. There is also ample evidence that poor system design can be a major cause of smelter down time, lost production and unforeseen high maintenance costs. The paper discusses these issues and offers guidance for improved design.

Jan 1, 1992